but he had learned you could go a long way in police work by just being organized, methodical, thorough, and healthy. And common sense did not hurt either.
He was completing his notes on a minor traffic accident when the call came in. It was not urgent, so he finished the cup of herbal tea he had resting in the cup holder and completed his notes.
He then closed his eyes and meditated for several minutes. It was not exactly police procedure, but his wife Susan was a great believer in cultivating inner peace, and it certainly seemed to work. He did not complete his shift stressed out like many of his colleagues. He could take most things in his stride.
Despite taking his time, he reached the turnoff to the clearing only fifteen minutes after the dispatcher's call had come through. The unpaved access track stretched out ahead of him. The clearing, he recalled, was about a quarter mile away. The forest crowded in on either side.
He was tempted to drive on down the track, but he decided to think this one through. If someone had been pushed into a helicopter in the clearing, they had to have been brought there. It could, of course, have been another helicopter, but if so, why make a switch? No, the chances were that a vehicle would have been used.
Richardson got out of the cruiser and examined the track carefully. He could see one recent set of wheel marks in the dust heading toward the clearing but none coming out. The hairs on the back of his neck started to prickle. The supposed incident had happened about an hour earlier. The vehicle that had been reported as being involved in the transfer should have left – or else it was still inside. There was one other possibility.
He picked up his radio and gave his call sign. 'Did our birdwatching witness drive to the clearing?'
'Negative,' said the dispatcher. 'His home is about two miles back, and he walked. He's there if you need him.'
'I've got one set of tire tracks going in,' said Richardson. 'I'm going to block off the road and go in on foot. I'll call you in ten.'
'Need backup?' said the dispatcher.
'No,' said Richardson. 'This probably doesn't amount to anything. But…'
He parked the cruiser across the track. Then he unclipped his shotgun. You never knew, and the mere sight of a shotgun tended to make potential assailants think twice. There was something about the sheer size of the muzzle.
He walked carefully and slowly down the track toward the clearing, examining not only the track itself but the undergrowth and woods on either side. If someone had been struggling in the car, they just might have been able to drop something out of the window. Perhaps some identification or a note. Well, it was unlikely, given the prevalence of air-conditioning combined with fully closed windows, but he had to check and now was the best time.
It was alarming how quickly the integrity of a crime scene could be compromised. Items of value that might also be clues had a tendency to vanish no matter how you tried to secure the scene. Human nature was just that – all too human. Of course, this was not yet a crime scene, but when you had a report you had to act as if the location might be. Certainly this was Richardson's way.
He held his shotgun in his right hand and used a stick to push aside the vegetation. All kinds of things that crawled and slithered and bit flourished in North Carolina – and not all were human. He smiled to himself, and then the joke lost some of its flavor as his stick revealed a rattlesnake curled up next to a rock. The snake seemed to look at him as if debating the odds, then shot into the undergrowth. It did not like shotguns either.
Richardson was used to snakes, but that kind of eyeball-to-eyeball encounter certainly got the adrenaline going. He waited until his heart had stopped pounding and then radioed in.
This time he was transferred to the lieutenant, who was becoming somewhat frustrated at how long checking out one simple call was taking. Particularly when it was almost certainly nothing.
'Hurry it up, Andy, will you?' said the lieutenant.
'Roger that, Lieutenant,' said Richardson flatly.
He entered the clearing a few minutes later. If he had read the tracks right, there should have been a car there, but there was nothing. This was all getting ridiculous, he decided. They would be talking flying saucers and little green men soon. In the real world, vehicles did not drive into lonely clearings and just vanish. Life was much more mundane. Solid stayed solid and flesh stayed flesh. And visible stayed visible.
All good sensible thinking, he reflected, but he still could not see that damned automobile and there was no track out of the clearing.
He started a perimeter search. The trees were growing too close together and too irregularly for a vehicle to have been driven between them. Then he saw the break in the tree line where maybe there had been a lightning strike or storm damage. Anyway, a couple of trees were down. The vegetation had been cut away and then replaced in a crude attempt to buy time.
He pulled the cut undergrowth out of the way. It did not take too long, and then there in front of him was the trunk of a Dodge sedan. A rental, by the look of it. The hood pointed into the forest.
The trunk was locked. He tried the doors and they were open. There were no keys in the ignition, but he found the trunk release lever.
He recognized the odor immediately. It was an amalgam of blood and excrement and fear. It was the smell of violent death.
He edged up the lid of the trunk with his stick and looked in.
Staring up at him, wide-eyed mouth open in a rictus grin of fear, was the body of a young woman. Her throat had been cut and it looked as if she had bled to death there. Her clothing and the inside of the trunk itself were saturated in blood.
Richardson could imagine her lying there terrified and helpless in the confines of the trunk as her executioner stood over her, knife in hand. There were severe slashes on her hands. She had tried to defend herself. Closer examination showed blood on and around the front passenger seat. She had been hit there, he surmised, and then dumped as she was dying. The callousness was chilling.
Subdued and depressed, he called in. He could take traffic accidents except where they involved the injury or death of children.
This kind of wanton butchery shook him. He thought of Susan. It could have been she in there.
Procedure dictated that he wait for the scene-of-crime team, but he had to do something and he knew he was professional enough to do it right. He started searching the clearing slowly and thoroughly, working to an imaginary grid.
There were clear signs of the reported helicopter and of activity surrounding it. Leaves and small branches had been dislodged by the downdraft, and some branches in the center of the clearing by landing skid marks suggested that the pilot had maybe clipped the tree tops coming in. Out of practice, inexperienced, or just a hotshot? Hard to know. Richardson favored out of practice. A novice would scarcely try landing in a narrow clearing like this.
After twelve minutes of searching, he saw a glint in the sandy earth fairly near the skid marks. Whatever it was seemed practically covered. Dropped by accident or deliberately.
He bent down and scratched the earth away with his stick. It was an unusual charm bracelet made of two types of gold, by the looks of it. He hunkered down, hooked the bracelet on the stick, and brought it close. The design was abstract, but one of the charms looked like a harp. It was an expensive item and had both a clasp and a safety chain. This had not fallen off by accident.
He read the inscription inside.
Richardson took an evidence bag out of his hip pocket and slipped the bracelet inside. He was thinking. The kind of gutsy person who dropped this will have tried to drop something more than once. But he had found nothing on the track, and the car's windows were, as he had expected, closed. Maybe she had been kept in the trunk with the other woman. Hell, maybe there was only one woman and the witness had been mistaken. She had struggled as she was being put on board and had been killed.
No, that did not feel right. The witness had proved out so far, so why not give him the benefit of the doubt and assume two women? That meant the kidnap victim could have been kept either in the trunk or in the back of the car.
Either way, it meant searching the car, and that was very much against the rules.
On the other hand, in a kidnapping – and now he was fairly certain there had been one – time was crucial.
